Indu Mitha’s love story carried Bharatanatyam across Partition, kept it alive in Pakistan

Indu Mitha, a 97-year-old Bharatanatyam exponent, passed away in Dublin after a brief illness. Born to a Bengali-Christian philosophy professor, Indu's family moved to Delhi from Lahore following the Partition of India in 1951. Four years later, she moved to Karachi against her parents' wishes and married a Pakistani army officer, Aboobaker Osman Mitha, despite her family's opposition due to cultural and religious differences.

Despite the divisive space in the Subcontinent at the time, Indu brought Bharatanatyam, a dance form from South India, from Delhi and Chennai to Pakistan. She studied philosophy at Delhi University and Bharatanatyam under Lalitha Shastry, along with modern and creative dance at Zohra Sehgal's institute in Lahore. Indu taught Bharatanatyam in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad for seven decades, influencing over 2,000 students.

Notable students include Amna Mawaz Khan, Iftikhar Masih, and her daughter Tehreema, who runs a dance academy in the US. Despite cultural conservatism in Pakistan, Indu persisted in teaching the art form, often taking it to schools and private academies. She even experimented with incorporating North Indian instruments and Urdu poetry into Bharatanatyam, an unprecedented move at the time.

Despite the challenges imposed by the Zia-ul-Haq regime in the 1980s, Indu continued to teach privately, with her daughter Tehreema choreographing a performance during that period.